


A Start

by Missy



Category: Matilda - Roald Dahl
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Developing Friendships, Gen, Reunions, Tentative Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 14:08:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20448380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: When the Wormwoods abandon Michael in their neighborhood, Mrs. Phelps becomes his adoptive mother.  But what does that mean for Matilda?





	A Start

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tablelamp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tablelamp/gifts).

Jennifer Honey has a pretty good idea of where her life is going these days.

After years of tragic loneliness and determined charity, she’s finally found her footing. A respectable teaching job, a busy life with her beloved daughter. Their weekends are filled with happiness and quiet nights are filled with happy companionship. The only thing she’d ever wanted out of life was to be a mother – and the universe had provided.

She absolutely doesn’t expect Mrs. Phelps to appear on her doorstep with a skinny boy bearing Matilda’s dark eyes, a bruise on his shoulder and quiet detachment draped over him like a shroud on a sunny Summer morning. She doesn’t expect the young boy who’s been dropped upon her front steps, standing with his finger up his nose and his hand curled around a beaten up suitcase.

The Wormwoods had, in the end, been the sort of parents to Michael that they’d been to Matilda; they’d pinned a note saying ‘take him’ to his sweater. She had no idea how he’d managed to find his way to her house, but his dirty hair and dusty cheeks suggested a long walk.

“I found him rooting through my garbage this morning,” Mrs. Phelps whispers in Jenny’s ear. Michael peers around Jenny’s hip, searching the inside of the room.

“Don’t you have a TV?” he asks.

“No,” says Jenny firmly. 

“You might wish to get one,” says Mrs. Phelps. “I don’t believe he’s ever lived in a place that doesn’t have some sort of television." 

“Oh, I don’t want to…” Jennifer bends closer, “Keeping him here might upset Matilda,” she whispers.

Mrs. Phelps considers Jennifer’s words carefully. Then, firmly, she says, “I’ll bring him to my own home and watch over the boy, then.”

Jenny’s shoulders slump and a sigh puffs from her lips; there’s a great tidal wave of relief at the notion running up her spine. She feels guilty for it. If she could help Matilda, perhaps quieter Michael might..but no, his bullying had hurt the girls’ feelings. “Perhaps they could speak in a controlled environment,” she suggests.

Her intentions are good.

Good intentions only mean so much in the end, but they’re all Jenny can offer at a time like this.

*** 

Mrs. Phelps enrolls Michael in school. He’s several grades below where he should be, and even then several grades below Matilda, thanks to his parent’s total neglect. But he fits in with his classmates, and in his quiet, invisible way, manages to become a useful and good student Mrs. Phelps is careful to bring him along, hoping he’ll make friends instead of burying himself in the media mad world of his past, the only one he knows.

Matilda watches all of this from a distance, not quite sure how to approach Michael – a boy she can’t quite bring herself to call a brother. At least, not until a much bigger, much angrier boy shoved him face-down into the dirt, and his tears and anger so reflect her old hurts that she gets between them.

Her reputation still precedes her. The very sight of her makes the kid cower back and away from Michael, running away to the safety of the central playground.

Matilda helps her brother up, out of the dirt and the blood in which he’d been lying. She brushes away the mud streaking his scraped-up knees, and suddenly speech bursts forth from Michael’s lips. “I didn’t mean it,” he said suddenly. “To be mean to you.”

“You weren’t mean to me that often…” Matilda begins, but the rush of confession has opened a wellspring in Michael; he has to purge himself of the wall that stands in his mind or lose the opportunity forever.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Michael says. “I just didn’t know what to say, or how to treat you. I followed what mom and dad did, and I didn’t realize that I was hurting you the same way they were hurting you. I’m sorry, Matilda. I didn’t mean to be like them.”

And Matilda remembers, suddenly, the sight of her younger brother’s face pressed to the back window of the family car – the only person waving back at her, the only person who cares about what’s going to happen. The hope in his eyes had been for himself, too, she suddenly realizes.

“I forgive you,” she says suddenly.

She means it with her whole heart. 

There is no miracle bullet, no cure for what the two of them have been through. Michael doesn’t hug Matilda. They don’t weep their way to reconciliation. She does help him to the nurse, where his cuts are treated.

When he leaves the office, there’s an apple waiting for him. A treat from Matilda.

***

Matilda and Michael see each other regularly enough afterwards – Mrs. Phelps even gets a house nearby as he becomes more enmeshed within the family – but their individual lives go on. 

And they are, in their special ways, extremely happy. Mrs. Phelps and Michael eat pizza and laughed at the tv set; go to the movies and talked about celebrity gossip and sports, because that was what Michael likes. Matilda and Jennifer keep having cozy tea parties and reading Louisa May Alcott; they make dollhouse furniture and go to museums. They skip rope and garden, and research the possibility of adopting a kitten.

They have found their families, but that doesn’t mean they don’t try to understand one another in any event. They'll always be siblings. Why not try to be friends?

When spring rolls around, Matilda comes to sit beside Michael. He hands Matilda a slice of watermelon fresh from the garden over lunch. She smiles and takes a juicy bite, and the juice of it dribbles down her chin in a pink, wavy line. They laugh at the mess and split a box of Animal Crackers without arguing over who gets the lion and who gets the monkey.

The sun keeps shining, warm and golden over their heads.

It is a start.


End file.
